


Sin and the Single Girl

by tei



Category: Fleabag (TV)
Genre: Confessional, Friendship, Gen, Masturbation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2019-05-31
Packaged: 2020-04-05 04:52:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19041496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tei/pseuds/tei
Summary: A series of Confessions.





	Sin and the Single Girl

Look, this doesn’t mean I can’t tell you about things. I didn’t mean it that way. Just-- not as they happen. Afterwards, okay? 

I’ll skip the boring parts. Like the part where Claire got to the airport and bought a ticket that she later complained about having to buy, even though she’s rich and really couldn’t care less, and discovered that Klare was not buying tweezers at Boots, he was snogging a flight attendant in the frequent flyer lounge. 

Still, it could have been worse. She could have had to sleep on her sister’s couch to while her soon-to-be-ex cleared his shit out of their house and listen to a week’s worth of noisy, sad wanking to Gregorian chant through the--

Skipping the boring parts, I said. Never mind. Let’s get to the good bit: Confession. 

No, not _that_ confession. You nasty perverts. 

The ones after that.

***

“This is a terrible idea,” said Claire, for about the sixth time. 

We’d taken the Tube to a church on the complete other side of the city. What can I say: I got a bit paranoid about it. 

“It’s a great idea,” I said, pulling out my phone to check the GPS I’d lined up as we exited the station. “Practice makes perfect. Luke’s bassoon teacher tells him that, apparently.”

“This _whole thing_ is a terrible idea,” she muttered. “The practice confession is actually the most sensible idea of the lot.” 

“I’m not trying to fuck him,” I told her, and I almost believed it. Any day now. With any luck, I’d completely believe it by next Saturday. 

Claire waited outside the unfamiliar church and gave me that tight, unconvincing little smile she as. There was, of all things, a _lineup_ inside the church. A quiet queue of middle-aged catholics. Nobody even looked at me as I joined it. Apparently confessing your sins is a popular event. 

The line went quickly. Too quickly. Actually, it was only once I was trapped inside the damn box that I realized I really should have at least googled “how to confess” on the way here. But of course… I had been told how to do this. 

_OK. So you say, ‘Bless me Father, for I have sinned.’_

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.” It sounded ridiculous. _Whatever crusty old homophobe is sitting on the other side of the screen definitely knows I’m a fraud already_ , I thought, panicked. “It has been-- uh-- a week since my last confession. At-- another church. I’m from out of town.” _Shit._

“OK.” The priest’s voice was gravelly and-- bored. Well, of course he was bored, I hadn’t told him anything good yet. Then I realized that, while I had been thinking of nothing _but_ this, in general terms, for the past week, I hadn’t actually thought about what I was going to tell this priest. Practice Priest. The one who didn’t matter. 

_Then I say, that’s OK, blah blah blah blah blah, ‘till you tell me what’s on your mind. Tell me your ssssssins. If you want._

“I fucked a--” _no._ “No. Shit. Sorry.” Suddenly I felt like I was about to vomit, and I sure as hell was not going to do it inside a wooden box with a velvet curtain. “Sorry. Jesus. I shouldn’t’ve… sorry.”

I might have heard “OK” again on the way out of the box. I guess that’s really all you can say to someone who sins while trying to confess. I failed to actually vomit, which was somehow disappointing.

“You were right,” I told Claire. “That was a terrible idea.”

I’m not a quitter, though. Even when maybe I should be. 

***

The next week-- Saturday, 3:45 PM, with confession scheduled from 3 to 4-- there was no line. There was Pam, sitting on a wooden chair just inside the church. 

Is it weird that I was glad that she was there?

I’d done my research, that time. Sign of the Cross, Confession, Penance, Act of Contrition, Absolution. 

There was a faint blue glow emanating from the other side of the screen, which went dark when I pulled open the curtain. I looked down. It felt like an entire lifetime ago that--

No. 

My throat felt like it had suddenly been coated with sand. _He’s going to tell me to get out. He’s going to think I’m trying to fuck him._

_Am I trying to fuck him?_

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.” 

It hung in the air, unmistakeable, in the silent chapel. I had to pry apart my teeth to prevent myself from biting entirely through my lip. _This was a bad--_

The quiet sound of lips opening, a tongue being pried off the roof of a mouth. “It has been…?” he prompted. 

_Two weeks and a day since I was on my knees in here._

“I’ve… never confessed before,” I said. 

A long exhale, like he was trying to buy himself time. Then, quietly, “What are your sins?”

My palms were so sweaty they stuck to the paper as I pulled it out of my purse. “Stupid to write a list, I know,” I muttered, just to break the silence. “And… a lot of them I’m not really all that sorry for. So.”

“I cannot absolve sins for which you do not feel contrition.” His voice was cold-- not harsh, but impersonal. Just a statement of fact. 

I stared down at the list. I hadn’t really been planning on reading a laundry list of sexual activities, anyway. That would not be kind. 

And despite how it might appear-- I really was trying to be kind. Please believe me. 

“We had a good Chatty Wednesday last week,” I said, choosing. “I had a moment to myself, and I sat down in the cafe, and a woman who’d just bought a sandwich asked my how my weekend was. And I told her that besides my dad getting married to a total cunt, it was surprisingly decent.” I paused, and I was listening for absent laughter. Or an attempt to conceal laughter. There was none. “But I just thought…” It felt like my bra was too tight, or like my heart was beating hard enough to escape it. “I thought about, that she chose to love my Dad. She’s still a cunt. But she chose to love him, and I didn’t have to… I didn’t…”

Quietly: “Go on.”

“That’s a venial sin,” I clarified. I knew that I couldn’t see through the screen, and didn’t want to, but I still glanced at the square of gauzy light. “I looked up the difference. When I’m in Hell, it won’t be because of that one.”

Then I did hear it-- just a tiny exhalation, quick through the nose, the tiniest hint of amusement. “True.”

“And I think it’s probably also a sin,” I continued, feeling a little lighter, “That some part of me is glad that Claire got her heart broken on the same day I did, so at least mine isn’t the only sad wanking going on in the flat. I’m confessing for the being-glad-for-her-pain thing, not the sad wanking. Because of the-- contrition thing.”

“Very good.”

“But I am sorry about that one. Um, I’m sorry for these--” I had written this bit down-- “and all of my sins.” Hm. Not quite. “Sorry. Some of my sins, rather. I really do love her-- Claire-- and I want her to be happy. And I’ll try to love _her,_ too, if she makes Dad happy.” 

There was a long pause. I tried to track the dust patterns in the dim light, and wondered if those tiny flecks of skin and dirt were being carried on puffs of air from my lungs or his. 

Finally: “I am going to assign you in penance to reflect upon three verses from Luke. 32 to 34.”

“So you guys read that thing for punishment as well as pleasure, huh?” Shit. _Shit._ I regretted that one as soon as it was out of my mouth. 

“Penance isn’t punishment for sin,” he said, and his voice was unexpectedly gentle. “Being farther away from God is punishment for sin. Penance is how you give thanks for being able to return to Him.”

“Oh.” That was rather nice, actually. _What was your penance, then?_ No. Don’t say that. “Okay, fair enough.” I glanced down again, at the crumpled and now sweat-sticky notes I’d brought with me. “This is… er, I printed this Act of Contrition thing off, but… I’m going to sound ridiculous saying it.” 

“He doesn’t mind.”

I couldn’t help but laugh a bit. “I guess He’d get used to people sounding ridiculous pretty quickly, if He’s hearing everything we even think. Okay. Okay.” I smoothed out the printout; it was barely visible but I remembered what it said, anyway. 

“Lord God, in your goodness have mercy on me.” _Her brown roots coming in, trying to touch them up by ourselves in the loo, what a disaster._ “Do not look on my sins,” _she giggles, her shoulder nudging mine, her smile as she says he’s not the best lay I’ve ever had but he’s more, you know?_ “But take away all my guilt.” _It doesn’t matter, I had thought as I undid his belt, it’s just sex, none of this really matters anyway._ “Create in me a clean heart and renew within me an upright spirit.”

I didn’t realize until the final word hung in the air that I was whispering.

A slight shift in the angle of the light, a hand slightly raised, blocking the light through part of the screen. 

Soft: rhythmical, like singing. “God the Father of mercies, through the death and resurrection of his Son has reconciled the world to himself and sent the Holy Spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins; through the ministry of the Church may God give you pardon and peace, and I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

_You absolve me._

I stumbled and nearly fell as I tried to stand up, which would have been absolutely mortifying. None of the sites had instructions having to do with pleasantries. “Thanks,” I tried. Then, “See you next week.”

I hadn’t seen him, of course, but then that was the point. 

***

Do you want to know what I was thinking about, as my hand slipped beneath the covers that night? Of course you do. You’re all filthy fucks. That’s why we get on so well. 

I kneeled before him, and then he kneeled before me. Maybe I’m sitting on the altar-- is that what it’s called? The big table thing at the front of the church. That. Knees spread. Arse cold on the marble. 

His _gorgeous_ tongue. Long, somehow loose and casual like the rest of him, just this side of too rough. He was fucking me with it, driving the slick piece of intimate muscle into my body as if it could ever penetrate me far enough to really matter. But _god_ it was hot that he kept trying. My moans rang out in the echo of the church, and he didn’t quiet me. He was too absorbed in his work, tongue pushing in and then dancing up over my clit. 

Those were my own fingers over my clit, of course. But I whispered “Oh, _God,_ ” when I came, and I actually meant it.

Strangely I felt less alone after. I wondered if he was wanking to me too, and then realized I didn’t want him to be. I wanted him to be happily, chastely asleep, forgetting his love for me, like I was determined to forget mine. 

***  
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been a week since my last confession.”

“Devout,” came the reply immediately. “I wish I could get most of my congregation to confess weekly.”

_You just need to give them sufficient motivation_ was the reply that came to mind, but somehow it wasn’t right. Because I wasn’t unsure any more: I wasn’t here to fuck him. I had an ulterior motive this time: I wanted to tell him something. 

_Confess_ is maybe too strong a word. 

“Is there, like, a statute of limitation on confessions?” Not that it would prevent me if there were. 

“Ha. No. God has a long memory. If you remember a sin that you have not yet confessed, you may do so.” He laughed a little. “I would say ‘must do so,’ but I don’t know that that would help.”

“Right. Okay. So, it’s maybe more of an ongoing sin. I don’t know. It’s about my parents.”

“About _her_ again?” 

I smiled. It was somehow strangely gratifying that we could both say _her_ in the exact right tone of voice to know who _she_ was. 

“No, actually. She’s not my parents, she’s _her_. But… my parents. My mom. Before she died, she told me to take care of him. It wasn’t a dying wish, exactly. She wouldn’t have been that…”

“Alright,” he interjected into my silence, and I felt a flush of gratitude. 

“But she wanted to know that we would always be close, in our way. And I haven’t exactly been following through on that.” I took a deep breath. “I don’t know what kind of sin that is. But it sure feels like one.”

Claire and I had gone to visit Dad for lunch, on _her_ invitation. We had talked awkwardly around the edges of Claire’s divorce-in-progress. _She_ didn’t mention the statue. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Not about giving it back to _her_ : no way. But thinking that it was Mom, faceless but still loving, staring at me through her well-shaped golden tits. 

“That’s it,” I said, and allowed my smile to creep in a little as I finished, “I’ve been very good apart from that. No sinning. Are you going to assign me more Bible verses as penance?”

“No,” he said. “You’re going to read more Bible verses without me telling you to.” Fair. Probably true. I’d already gone looking for the filthiest and weirdest ones, which had a funny way of morphing into actually reading the damn thing. 

“What do you want to do as penance?”

I scowled at him through the screen. “What do you mean, what do I want to do? I want you to--”

_Tell me what to do._

No. _No._

Somehow, it reverberated in the air between us even without my having said it. Then, like smoke, it dissipated. Or like a fart that everyone’s too polite to mention and eventually clears without remark, leaving the perpetrator feeling like they’ve gotten away with something. 

“Penance is more often agreed-upon than assigned,” he said gently, and I thought, _there, that wasn’t too bad._ “In many cases, penance is related to the sin.”

I sighed. “This is your way of telling me to genuinely reach out to my dad, isn’t it.”

“Nope,” he said, the “P” popping in the silence of the chapel. “I’m only a vessel for God, in here. I’m not telling you anything.”

“Okay. God is telling me to genuinely reach out to my dad. That makes it _much_ better.”

He laughed, and it stuck me how much easier this was than last week. It was getting better. It really was. 

“Do you want me to absolve you?” There was a little giggle in his voice, just a hint of self-mockery. 

“Nah. Maybe next week? I’ll bring you a doozy.”

“Next week, then.” 

***

That night, I slid the vibrator somewhere under the covers where it wouldn’t touch me to be washed in the morning (or forgotten about and used again without washing-- who’s counting, really) and lay back. 

The fantasy receded. It slotted back into the mental filing system, somewhere in between the one where a giant guinea pig fucks me with a cucumber and the one where Vladmir Putin bites my nipples. 

_Huh,_ I thought. _That felt strangely normal._

***

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.” 

“You know, you don’t have to say that if you don’t want to.” 

“I want to.” It was true. I didn’t believe that he could really grant absolution for anything, of course. He’s just a human. Having someone’s cock inside you puts that kind of thing into perspective. But some part of me still wanted him to.

“It has been a week since my last confession, but I’ve remembered some more sins. Turns out I have a lot of them.”

“OK.”

“Well, I went through a lipstick-stealing phase in my teens. Lots of them. Nice ones, too. Enough lipstick for a lifetime, basically. Some of them are still sealed. I’m wearing one right now. Some part of me likes it, the fact that everyone is looking at my face but can’t see that part of it is stolen. If I ever run out, I’ll probably steal more.”

“That’s not good,” he laughed. “You’re not supposed to confess an _intention_ to sin.”

“Sorry. Add whatever that means to the tally, then. Did you know I had a dog growing up? I did. Sally. That fucker would eat anything. Mostly, though, what she ate was my dinner, from my hand, under the table. She vomited it up most of the time, and my parents just thought she had a delicate stomach. I do, uh-- feel pretty bad about that one. She died of doggie heart disease.”

“Yeesh.” I could hear the grimace, but also a touch of amusement.

“And…” I took a deep breath. “I had sex with a priest. I’m sorry for these and selected highlights of my other sins.” 

There was a long, long silence. 

“I can’t absolve you of that,” he said finally. “If I did, I would be committing a sin that only the Pope can forgive.” 

Huh. Well, I hadn’t expected that. Still, it hardly mattered. 

“That’s okay,” I said. “I came up with my own penance for that one, though. Is that allowed?” 

“Will it stop you from doing it if I tell you it’s not?”

I frowned. The answer could have been no, but it wasn’t. Because if he didn’t want me to do this penance, then I wouldn’t, I realized. I would walk out of the church and not come back, and I would be okay with it. Eventually. 

“Yes,” I said, “Because I need you to help me with it. I read that’s something that priests do, sometimes. Say ‘I will be doing the remainder of your penance for you.’ Sounds like a bit of a guilt trip if you ask me, but. I need your help with this one.” 

“Ooookay.” Cautious. 

“I’m going to fall out of love with him,” I said confidently, “And I’m going to become his friend. Properly. I might even stop wanking to Gregorian chant.”

The bench in the confessional creaked. Dust settled. Pam was playing some sort of game with noisy sound effects on her mobile. 

“I will complete that penance with you,” he said.

I let out a breath.

A slight chuckle from the other side of the screen. “Can’t make any promises on the Gregorian chant front, though.”

***

I knocked on his door at 6:30 PM on Sunday night. Not too late. The summer sun was still out, and when he opened the door, he smiled in complete lack of surprise. 

“Did you know that a fox followed me home, that night?” he said. 

I grinned. “I… might have told him where you went. Sorry.”

“No, it’s fine.” He pointed out into the bushes across from the door, squinting. “I think he took up residence there. To keep an eye on me.”

He held the door open, and I stepped in. The apartment looked the same, pleasantly cluttered, like a nerdy university student with good taste in art. 

He disappeared into the kitchen as I sat down and came back with a drink: a G&T, but in a glass. “Fancy.” He grinned.

Part of me wanted to crowd him up against the wall and shove my tongue in his mouth. Part of me also wants to jump into the Thames every time I get near it, just to see what would happen, but I’ve managed not to, so far. 

It was going to be okay.

“Can I confess a sin?” I said, sinking into the couch more fully. I took a long drink, because I was going to need it. “Informally. No absolution needed.” 

“Sure,” he said. “Or you can just… tell me something. As a friend.”

I swallowed the sudden lump in my throat. The sunlight streamed into the apartment, bright and clean, and his face was honest and open. Loving. “Okay,” I said. “I’d like to tell you about my friend Boo.”


End file.
